Hackney’s iconic street market is under threat again, seven years after its last fight for survival.
There surrounded by bundles of linen packed in plastic cases was a woman sitting inside her market stall on Dalstons iconic Ridley Road market when a woman emerges in front of her to give her a letter and an apology from the indoor market’s landlord which said that she needed to leave by the end of March – she had been running her stall for nearly five years.
She wasn’t the only one to get a visit that day. Over a dozen market traders inside the market hall had received notices from their tax haven-based corporate landlord that their leases were going to end – what they are calling a de facto eviction, and now they are worried about their livelihoods.
There are 13 traders in question who all operate out of the indoor section of Ridley Road market, which was bought by its current landlord in 2016 for £6.5 million. It’s a special space for locals in this corner of Hackney, and lies next to the outdoor market (a different entity), which is managed by Hackney Council.
Since they have been there for years and help the local community, it is obvious that the traders are concerned.
This is not their first battle for these traders; the first endeavour to evict them was in 2018. Larochette tried to submit planning documents that sought to turn the indoor market into a block of offices and luxury flats, but after a spirited campaign with huge community protests, mass media coverage and hundreds of complaints, Larochette’s plans were rejected.
In 2022, an agreement was supposed to have been reached to safeguard its fate. Larochette would refurbish the indoor market, once called Ridley Road Shopping Village, which was suffering from leaks, damp and other extreme neglect after years of decay.
When it was finished, which was supposed to take six months, Hackney council said it would take over the indoor market’s lease for the following fifteen years, protecting the vendors against further evictions. In addition to the fact that the renovation took three years instead of six months, Hackney Council never assumed the building’s lease as scheduled.
Less than a year after the traders moved into the remodelled building, their survival is once more in jeopardy.
In the letter sent to the traders on 17 February, lawyers representing landlord Larochette Real Estate Inc claimed that they had no choice but to end the leases due to a Met crackdown on worsening antisocial behaviour in the market. Traders would be forced to leave at the end of March, when their annual leases expired.
The Met police, however, contest this. In an email to local councillor Zoe Garbett, the force called the wording in Larochette’s letter “inaccurate”, and denied that they “requested the closure of the indoor market space or issued a closure order”.
“A Community Protection Warning (CPW) was issued, which is the lowest form of enforcement in an ASB and crime setting and was a joint decision between the council and the police,” the force explained. They added that it was “the continued failure of the building owner [to take] reasonable and necessary measures to address safety concerns” that led to the CPW being issued.
Garbett agrees, telling us that Larochette has “misrepresented the police’s position, who have not requested the closure of the building”. She accused the landlord of shirking their responsibilities towards the traders, particularly their promised redevelopment. “I am outraged at this action from Larochette — not only are they proposing to evict traders, again, the way they have communicated this to traders and the public has been totally unacceptable,” she told The Londoner. She called on the council to back the traders and save a central part of the century-old Ridley Road market.
When Rainbow Properties was approached for comment, the agent acting for Larochette, a spokesperson, challenged the Met and Garbett’s position. They claimed they had received two hand-delivered written warnings from the Met, dated 6 February 2026, and threatening “imminent Community Protection Orders as a result of the violence and drug dealing inside the market”.
For traders, who are usually the victims of those doing the antisocial behaviour on the market, being forced out felt like salt in the wound. “Do you know how many times I’ve complained about it?” says Asli Uygur, who’s been running her clothes store in the indoor market for almost a decade. “They’re punishing the victims.”
Larochette is registered in the offshore tax haven of the Virgin Islands, and its listed director is Guy Rafael Ziser. A London real estate developer and landlord, his most visible business is Ziser London, a company established by Guy’s father, Shmuel Ziser, a former Israeli professional footballer who moved to the UK in the early 1980s. But it’s almost impossible to quantify the exact size and value of Guy Rafael’s London real estate empire. He has some 44 different companies he’s listed as a director of, including Rainbow Properties, which manages the Ridley Road market.
A spokesperson for Rainbow told The Londoner that “the building owner would like to stress that the market is to be closed solely for community safety reasons”. They added that they contested the description of the mass non-renewal of the traders’ leases as “evictions” and stressed that there were “no plans to sell the market for redevelopment”.
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